Paul III responded by convening the Council of Trent in 1534 that launched the Counter-Reformation. In 1517, Luther’s 95 Theses threw Catholicism into a crisis which became the Reformation. Early in that century, Julius II wanted to tear down St Peter’s Basilica and commissioned Bramante to rebuild it, a project he financed through sale of indulgences only to attract all the fury of Martin Luther. In the late 15th century, Savonarola fought lust and libertine morals in a bid to steer Florentine civil society and the clergy back into acceptable standards of morality, a task that fell to the Vatican in the last half of the 16th century. View of the dome of St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican, Rome, 1546-1564. Mannerism took a tangent into France where it evolved into French Classicism. Generally admitted to be a decadent form of Italian Renaissance art, Mannerism is the baseline for the start of the Late Renaissance. The Renaissance started into the down-slope as Mannerism was getting into its upswing. The Florentine school was founded in 1563 and headed by Vasari. A huge gap arose between the ancient guilds with vested interests or religious obligations and the new academies that were asserting their right to legislate standards for good taste. As creative drive started tapering off, it was replaced with a set of rules and guidelines. Moreover, the foundation of schools responded to the need for rules and authority symptomatic of any institution that has topped out. The Renaissance was no exception to the inevitable bell curve of rise, zenith, and decline. This was the context into which Michelangelo evolved and he would revolutionise art in the 16th century. It was the triumph of logic, perfection, beauty, and the quest for ideal values. The Renaissance heralded the rise of reason. Since Michelangelo’s time, ‘Medici’, ‘Renaissance’, and ‘Florence’ are inextricably anchored in the collective mind. Everyone tries to catch it, to rub it in to their skin and that of their friends, wanting it – and the moment – to last forever.David (detail), 1504. Carlos Clarke captures its crescendo in a joyous tempest of foam, pumped out across the dance floor. Lips lock, tongues dart, fingers probe, hands grasp flesh, in this rite of passage from innocence to experience. Yet in a club, the Hammersmith Palais, this explosion of unleashed sexuality mirrors the same scene in youth clubs, living rooms and public parks across the country. Carlos Clarke, who was sent to board at Wellington College, saw this orgiastic spectacle as ‘a peculiar side effect of a British public school education’, in which access to the other sex is limited to the point of obsession, if not actual sexual persuasion. Such events feature the holy trinity of ‘getting off with’ the object of one’s desire: alcohol, music and easily removable clothes. He had described his native Cork, which he left as a young man, as ‘no place for a libidinous adolescent.’ A quarter of a century later, he found the perfect location to observe teenage lust: Public School Balls. His work would span the genres of fine art, celebrity portraiture, photojournalism and advertising photography his signature style a dark, brooding vulnerability. Serious about his work, he studied at the London College of Printing, where he fell in love with the sensual space of the dark room, and then as a postgraduate at the Royal College of Art. However, Carlos Clarke was far from one-dimensional. His visual interests – women and rubber, in particular – sealed his reputation as a photographer of erotic images. But, as these images from ‘notoriously orgiastic’ public school balls attest, he was also a consummate photojournalist.” British Journal of Photographyīob Carlos Clarke was a provocateur. “Bob Carlos Clarke was best known for his impossibly glamorous, unapologetically sexy nudes. The first book published since the death of Bob Carlos Clarke in 2006.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |